When our friend, Jon, told us that there was a premier for his new movie in Los Angeles, we jumped at the opportunity to be there with him. He’s one of my husband’s oldest friends, my old roommate here in Oakland, one of our best men at our wedding, my wii-bowling nemesis, the official officiant for my wedding, and one of the most talented filmmaker and photographer I know. He left us out in Oakland one day to do some filming for a documentary in North Carolina and told us he would be back in a month or two. He never returned. As much as we missed him, we knew how important this was and we grew attached to the characters when he would talk about them. It was a labor of love, filming over the span of six years, and anyone would be able to see the heart and soul […]

I disappear when stuff starts getting to me. It’s a habit that I try hard to break but it’s still something so easy to fall back to. Stuff has been getting to me and I would love to just take some time to process all of it, I don’t feel like I can. Life has all sorts of bumps and my first job as a mother just can’t stop for them. I’m still going to make sure my daughter is taken care of. Once she is, I’ve had some design project deadlines to worry about and then there’s this pressure to get back to writing or photography or Instagram that I’ve also signed on for when I started Ever Winding Road. It can be a little overwhelming sometimes, but I’m going to try to work through it. The last couple weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind. I knew October […]

Almost five years ago I embarked on the hardest challenge of my life. I was pregnant with my first child, my daughter Evie. She’s the apple of my eye and I am always so fortunate to have her in my life. Somehow, I still find myself trying to come to terms with what exactly happened to my life, my body, and my relationships since then. Let me set the stage a bit. I was a little untethered then; moved away from home, no family and few friends, unmarried, living in California with my boyfriend (now husband), and working at a design and build firm as a designer/ project manager (I was doing double duty when the lead manager was let go) which was (at the time) teetering on needing to close. Life had it’s stresses, but manageable and not as complicated as I thought it was. I didn’t even know I […]

A couple months ago, I was convinced by my friend, Jessie, that we would start running together again and run another 5K together. We had run together before, almost every day at one point, as she helped me to train for my first 5K over four years ago. We decided to do it again, set ourselves a goal, and work towards it. I even convinced a third friend, Kirk Ann, to run with us. Back when we ran regularly, I was feeling pretty unhealthy and wanting to make some changes with my life. I ate better, took up running, signed up for the San Francisco Marathon 5K race, and even raised a couple thousand dollars for the American Institute for Cancer Research in honor of some very important relatives that I had lost. That first race was pretty tough as well as rewarding for me. Shortly after running it, I […]

There’s something bothering me about my profession, and I don’t think I was able to really put it into words until I started considering what made some projects more difficult for me and what I would be looking for in my own space. As an interior designer, my job is to outfit your home with a new look and an overall aesthetic. I promote purchasing goods, making shopping lists for clients to create that look. At this point in my own life, I struggle with purchasing things for my own home, however pretty it may be. I actually purge regularly, removing things from my space and identify more with creating spacial efficiency. This idea is almost the opposite of what is provided by some interior designers and how people identify what interior designers do. Photo of that one time I came dressed to match LA’s Pacific Design Center. I started considering […]

With Evie back in school, I have the time now to really just spend a day to myself. I guess recently, I’ve been dealing with some phony people and discouraging situations, so it’s nice to get out of your head for a bit. Nature is the reminder for me that no matter how crazy life gets, it’s all pretty insignificant in comparison. I couldn’t ask for a better situation when my girl, Rachelle, and I decided to take a little hike in Muir woods. The drive across the Richmond bridge and up through Mill Valley was beautiful. Roads were winding up the mountain with breathtaking vistas of the bay. Once we arrived there, we couldn’t believe how many people were there. It was surprising for a regular weekday morning. I am still amazed at how much different the California landscape can change from one mile to the next, this park was no […]

As a mother, I have moments of questioning what I’m doing and how things affect her. She’s 4 and has been getting stronger in her abilities to understand the world and communicate it with us. She fills with questions and we as her parents are here to answer them. I’ve been a little overcome recently with thoughts of what kind of world she has waiting for her. Her mind already understands empathy. She sees a friend cry at school and she wants to console them. Her mind already understands injustice. Her daily struggle in life is negotiating her bedtime as she sees it as unfair that we get to stay up later than her. Slowly, her connections with the world get larger than her home or her classroom, they become a community issue. That community issue grows to a larger world issue. I know my daughter is watching me for reactions on issues, […]

August ended up being a pretty busy month for having visitors around. Maybe it’s just a natural reaction to the fall season when we all need to get that one last vacation in. Having just gone on vacation last month, and having some travel plans coming up, it’s nice to take some time to just stay home. Luckily for us, staying around the Bay always feels like a pseudo vacation when we have company. I think in the matter of one month we had about 8 visitors! Some have never been here, some used to live here, and some haven’t been here to visit in a couple years. Whichever the case, I was glad to have all of them around to catch up with. Whenever a visitor comes around, we try to take them out to some of our favorite places to eat or drink, so I wanted to share […]

September 1st will mark my 6 months of having this blog and documenting my adventures. Although writing about my life constantly leaves me feeling like I’m exposed, I also feel like there’s personal feelings that get more hidden. Like as much as I’m putting out there, I find myself keeping more close, like I’m loosing too much too fast. The editing and omitting of things, is still something that I haven’t gotten used to… probably because I do feel like this blog (as in my personal life) is a work in progress. The beginning of my blogging journey started with a little self realization and creating my own ambitious dreams for the year and for my life. Maybe it’s because it’s the year of the monkey or mercury in retrograde, but the stars are aligned once again to f*ck my sh*t up once again. Life has been changing a little too fast […]

Who?

Thank you for joining me on Ever Winding Road.
I am a mother and wife with a love of design, the outdoors, traveling, and eating. I'm also a first time blogger and exploring a new creative outlet here on this blog, so it is a work in progress. My husband and I have made our way out west to Oakland, California after leaving Chicago, Illinois 8 years ago, but know the adventures never end...